Racism: deciding what dies. - Achille Mbembe Necropolitics
The United States has agreed to back an Israeli operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah in exchange for Israel forgoing a major strike on Iran, unnamed Egyptian officials have told the Qatari Al-Araby Al-Jadeed news outlet…A US official told American broadcaster ABC News on Wednesday that the Israeli response to Iran could now come after the Passover holiday, which begins Monday evening and ends 30 April. ABC cited Israeli officials as saying that Jerusalem on two occasions this week dropped imminent plans to strike Iran. - The Jewish Chronicle
Should telecommunications be nationalized?: The federal government must not accept that the telecommunications companies under its jurisdiction and regulated at its initiative are exporting our jobs and damaging our economy. - Hilltimes
MILORAD DODIK, President of the Republika Srpska (April 2, 2024): “As far as we are concerned, the point is on sanctions. Let anyone write what they want. Let him say what he wants. We don’t have time to deal with that. Nor do we want to deal with it”. However, everything changed after the recent visit to Bosnia and Herzegovina by the acting assistant secretary for finance of the United States of America, Anna Morris, who warned domestic banks that by doing business with persons who are on the “black list” they risk being sanctioned themselves. She also announced the expansion of the American “blacklist”. - Sarajevo Times
Banking on ‘Bros’: Netflix’s first original Hebrew-language series is finally arriving: A spokesperson for Netflix denied a report in the Ynet news outlet earlier this month that the company was seeking to downplay the international release of the show amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Yet nobody involved with the show was made available for interviews ahead of its premiere, with the spokesperson saying the stars and creators preferred to let the series speak for itself, rather than answer questions that would undoubtedly veer to the political.
Behold China’s consumer paradise: Economists may not see it yet in the numbers but for foodies, shoppers and travelers China is consumption heaven on earth…The first thing to understand about this consumer paradise is that service in China is now second to none – and we mean you Japan! This applies to everything, from restaurants, to e-commerce platforms, to hairdressers, to banks, to airlines. But this isn’t Japanese service with lots of bowing, scraping and artisanal attention to detail. This is the Haidilao model – industrialized customer service scaled for the masses…Waiting areas have an onsite manicurist, a supervised child playpen, masseuses, table games, shoeshine machine and snacks. Bathrooms are spotless, smell of incense and have bum-washing toilets. Toothbrushes, toothpaste, floss, cotton swabs and lotion are provided by the sink…China’s consumer paradise is strictly enforced by brutally influential customer ratings on e-commerce platforms. Yours truly once gave a boutique hotel perfect marks in all categories except one, which I rated four out of five stars. The proprietor called immediately, offering amends.
30 years before parents and lawmakers sought to save youth from smartphones via age limits and bans in schools, a similar conversation took place about a pre-cursor to the cellphone: pagers. In 1996 a 5-year-old in New Jersey was suspended for taking a beeper on a school trip, outrage ensured - catching the attention of Howard Stern, leading to calls for the laws to be amended or repealed. - Pessimist Archive
Billionaire Faked Own Death To Join Russian Lover in Moscow: Reports
“Love without risk is an impossibility, like war without death.” - Alain Badiou, In Praise of Love
20 years ago, I was fascinated by the concept of deliberative democracy, meaning that by finding the best arguments, you can achieve something in the political debate. But now I think the elite political class is completely decoupled from deliberative issues like arguments or economic research. I have colleagues in my country who are doing great work on wealth inequality, showing how easy it would be to introduce financial transaction taxes, wealth taxes, capital gains taxes, and inheritance taxes, but the elite class ignores their work…. I’ve experienced many devastating things, but one of the most shattering issues was the fact that the EU was not capable of introducing a financial transaction tax despite the fact that the financial sector has caused so much damage to our society. Even the International Monetary Fund, the OECD, and the European Commission were in favor of implementing this kind of tax. Yet it never happened. - Institute for New Economic Thinking
Capitalism takes an ideological hold of people so tightly not because it alienates them but because it promises a cure for their alienation. Every transaction that occurs in a capitalist society has the image of an end to alienation animating it. Even though capitalism forces subjects to experience their alienation, it does so while also promulgating the promise of a cure for this problem. Under capitalism, alienation appears as a remediable problem, not as the structure that constitutes subjectivity. This is the key to capitalism’s structure and to its attraction for even those who don’t benefit materially from it. - Todd McGowan p. 73 Embracing Alienation
All creation depends on alienation, which is a process that uproots us from our place and from the given properties of our existence. As it dislocates us, alienation frees us from our situation. Even though all people are born into a specific social situation in which powerful forces act on them, they are not reducible to the place where they emerge or to these determinative forces, no matter how powerful they may be. As a result of the primary alienation in language, an internal distance forms that allows people to relate to themselves as if to another entity, at the same time as it distances them from otehrs who surround them. We are alienated both from ourselves and from others. No matter what we do, we will never overcome this alienation. It is the basic fact of our existence… Alienation is the lack of self-identity. This lack of self-identity gives the subject distance from the conditions out of which it emerges. If I am not identical ot myself, if I am at odds with myself, I cannot be completely determined by external forces. As a being separated from myself that is not just one thing, I can never just be what any external forces would have me be. My internal split indicates a resistance to what my biology or my society would make me. - Todd McGowan’s new book Embracing Alienation
I want to be at the next wicket when Karl-Erivan Haub applies for his annulment. “I will need you to sign this affidavit declaring that you personally failed to fail at being.”